


Alluvium - Chapter 2

by AWizardWithoutHerStaff



Series: Alluvium - Uprooted from Sarkan's POV [2]
Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, POV Sarkan, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23635255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AWizardWithoutHerStaff/pseuds/AWizardWithoutHerStaff
Summary: She looked like a lunatic, crowned in filth and gleaming rebellion.Chapter 2 of Uprooted from Sarkan's point of view.In which he takes a probably ill-advised trip to see Agnieszka's family, fails to root out a spy, and ultimately feels less bad about it than he should.But he finally explains properly to Agnieszka that she's a witch... oh no, wait, no he doesn't.***This is a fun rewrite of 'Uprooted' by Naomi Novik from our most prickly and sarcastic of Dragons, Sarkan.This is the original story Uprooted, so it follows the book very closely and it will spoil stuff from the book. Really, it's just a fun exercise in point of view and characterisation. The characters and the majority of the dialogue is Naomi Novik's (except of course where Sarkan isn't around Agnieszka).So far, I'm plodding along with it for fun - going to see how far this goes :)
Relationships: Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan
Series: Alluvium - Uprooted from Sarkan's POV [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693372
Comments: 29
Kudos: 80





	Alluvium - Chapter 2

# Alluvium

## Chapter 2

We didn’t speak again for four days, though I heard her, clattering about. It was like an untidy tempest swept through my corridors, banging doors, all ineffectual bluster. I believe she thought she went unseen as she stormed down to the kitchens to blow through a month’s worth of my stores. Cupboards thumped closed, plates clattered, and a knife hit against the chopping board with a steady clack, clack, clack. She hummed _constantly_ , her voice wavering up and down, echoing off the stone; I honestly couldn’t believe she could make so much _noise_.

With the amount she appeared to be cooking, she ought to have been able to lay a feast for the whole valley, yet at each mealtime there was only a single tray placed carefully where I would find it. It was invariably splattered with gravy, or dark, ashy fingerprints, yet the food gradually began to improve. There was thick bread smeared with a soft herb-infused butter, lamb shank cooked until it was soft; it was _rustic_ but it served. I left her to it. She seemed to be settling into some kind of pattern – something that I could predict and avoid as I wanted to – and I began to feel like the chaos of that first disastrous day had passed.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

On the fifth day I woke early and unsuspecting. It was still dark and I lit the lamps without rising from my bed with an easy flick of my finger. The season had truly begun to turn, the dark drawing in of the evenings and nights reluctant to shed their grip on the mornings. I felt the bite of cold air against my skin as I rose and pushed aside the heavy drapes of my bed. I didn’t mind it: winter was a simpler time for me. The Wood, ancient and incomprehensible as it was, was still a living forest, and it seemed to follow the natural order of things.

The coverlet of the bed pulled sharp and straight at my will, the crimson curtains drawing neatly back behind thick, golden ropes. I shrugged on a coat of dark burgundy hemmed in black, a tracing of my symbol – the Dragon – coiling up its left side; nothing too ostentatious. I tugged the sleeves of my shirt straight beneath the thick cuffs and slipped on boots of soft, supple leather. My routine did not differ from any other morning.

In my laboratory, I opened one of the windows to admit the sentinel, feeling the blast of the chill Autumn air on my face. The dawn was finally lightening the sky in washed out blue and pale yellow, and I could hear the first calls of men making their way out to the fields to gather the last of the harvest. The sentinel came at my call, milky white and opalescent, drifting like a soap bubble into the cupped palm of my hands. For a moment, my own black eyes were reflected back at me, then it shivered obligingly and started to show itself to me. Trees drifted slowly past, thick black shadows lying between them, as the sentinel replayed its long, meandering path through the Wood. It was unnaturally still beneath that dark canopy of brown leaves, barely a breath to stir the branches above or the tight, snarling brambles below.

I hunched over it, tracking every movement with my eyes, looking for that first sign – the first hint of something that was different or wrong. I saw the unnatural, lurching gait of a Walker at the corner of the image, its long and twisted limbs swallowed by the shadows, but there was nothing unusual: nothing to raise the fine hairs in a prickle on the back of my neck. The Wood was slumbering, drawing down for winter.

Of course, if I was looking for danger, I should have looked _within_ my tower, not without.

I had started to eat the dinner she’d left for me when I felt it. The stew was hearty and warm, rich meat and salted vegetables, and I’d even felt a flicker of gratitude to her when I noticed the crockery and tray had been wiped clean of any spills.

The spell hit me like a heavy punch to the chest; the power was mounting so fast I could hardly believe it. The whole tower shivered with it down to its very foundations and my breath felt tight and hot in my chest. It was a _great working_ , at least, something not even the foolhardiest of young wizards would attempt without years of practice and guidance. And it was coming from upstairs – from a girl who, until a week ago, had not even _known_ she was a witch. Supposedly.

I took the stairs three at a time and threw open the door to her room. There she was, sitting calmly beneath the window, her curling hair haloed in light. The words of the working had been tripping lightly off her tongue like she was humming some children’s skipping rhyme, and on her lap sat none other than _Luthe’s Summoning_. _Luthe’s Summoning._ Perhaps the greatest and most dangerous of all my books – there hadn’t been a successful casting of _The Summoning_ in a hundred years or more and _never_ alone and— and _never_ from some half-formed, ignorant, air-headed child who had no notion of what she was doing.

This was no accident. It couldn’t be. I was breathless with anger.

She stopped as soon as she saw me, slack-jawed and indignant.

‘ _Tualidetal_ ,’ I said, throwing out my hand to drag the book away from her. I was just in time. I could collapse the spell before it took hold: before its mounting power toppled in on her and swallowed us both.

She _resisted_ me, wrapping her grubby arms around it as my spell tried to wrest it from her grasp. Blindly, stupidly, she clung onto the book which would have as easily devoured her as it would me. Only then did I truly realise what she was – what she _had_ to be. She was a spy. A trap. A cunning, spiteful infiltration from one of those jealous, odious bastards at court. And oh, how I had fallen for it.

Incandescent with rage, I stormed across the room and threw her against the bed, pressing her hard against the mattress where she could do no further harm. She stilled beneath my hand, staring up at me with wide, innocent eyes, as if I’d be fooled by them again.

‘So,’ I said, not trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. I plucked the book from her trembling fingers and tossed it onto a table to one side. ‘Agnieszka, was it? Agnieszka of Dvernik.’

She stared at me. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

I leaned down towards her, looking for the spell which had compelled her to this madness; I imagined I could smell it on her, the influence of some malevolent wizard: the Falcon’s less-than-subtle workings, perhaps. Or was she a willing accomplice? Buoyed up on some promise of riches and power to partake in my undoing? Little knowing that the collapse of such a spell would have consumed the whole tower, a great obliterating hole in the mountainside into which both of us would have been swallowed.

‘Agnieszka,’ I murmured, wondering if that were her true name. I was so close to her, I could see my thin face reflected in her wide, brown eyes, but I still felt no sense of any magic – of Solya’s puppetry. ‘Tell me, dear Agnieszka, where are you really from? Did the Falcon send you? Or perhaps even the king himself?’

She faked her confusion admirably. ‘I— what?’

‘I _will_ find out,’ I hissed. I could feel the anger coiling inside me, ugly and bitter. ‘However skilful your master’s spell, it will have holes in it. Your— _family_ may think they remember you, but they won’t have all the things of a child’s life. A pair of mittens or a worn-out cap, a collection of broken toys— I won’t find those things in your house, will I?’

‘All my toys were broken?’ she garbled incoherently. ‘They’re— yes? All my clothes were always worn out, our rag-bag is all them—’

I was shaking with anger now. ‘Don’t dare lie to me! I will tear the truth out of your throat—’

I’d leaned on top of her without realising what I was doing, my fingers resting on her neck, no thought in my head except the fury, the _betrayal_ , the rank humiliation of Solya gaining the upper hand on me for even a moment. It did not occur to me how I looked to her, but at some point her need to escape must have overwritten her fear, because she braced herself against my chest and threw us both bodily to the ground. _Again,_ I found myself on the floor, tangled with this feral creature, but this time she was up and away in a heartbeat, stumbling over me and into the hallway.

I did not run. This was my tower – there was nowhere she could run to. I followed her down the stairs, feeling my anger and my magic looming behind me. Everything took on a different, more sinister, cast: her attempt to push me down the stairs, her fear that I had realised her intent and meant to end her, her exhaustion after one simple cantrip; she must have spent her magic elsewhere, laying careful traps for me. To think, I had almost felt _sorry_ for her. No matter, I would root them out just as I would root _her_ out.

I heard her thump and stumble into my laboratory – _stealth_ was certainly not something this spy possessed. I followed her in, and it only took a moment to spot her. The lamps were out so the room was lit only in green, flickering flame and shadows pooled in the corners. She’d huddled into one of them, a dusty foot jutting out from behind one of my cabinets. I stalked towards her, readying myself with a working to restrain her.

Again, she darted away, like a rabbit zigzagging across a road, and in her haste, her shoulder collided with one of my shelves. My heart rocked with it, watching decades-worth of potions rattle in their racks. A single grey bottle rolled slowly off the shelf, hit her back and smashed onto the floor. A stone potion – a sorry waste. The thin, wafting smoke clung to her and drew up into her lungs. Undulating grey stone spiralled over her skin like bark, immobilising her at last; she had turned herself to stone.

I loomed over her. The only thing still living were those eyes, bright even in the frozen stone of her face. I stared at her, utterly perplexed as to why someone would send such a clumsy and incompetent spy to assassinate me.

‘No,’ I said aloud, ‘—no, you can’t possibly be a spy.’

I stalked away, determined to find some hint of her duplicity, some sign of the Falcon’s impenetrably ridiculous plan. I used the transport spell to reach Dvernik, all my anger still knotted in my gut. I barely knocked before I slammed open the door to her former home, little thinking that these peasants would have been no wiser to Solya’s workings than I – and perhaps even she – had been. A tall, thick-set man leapt to his feet as I entered, and a woman gasped with surprise, clutching her heart through her apron. There were two younger men as well, though I barely registered them, their mouths hanging open in shock. They all looked at me like a Walker had just come lurching through their door.

‘M-my lord,’ stammered the man; they certainly looked and behaved like ordinary peasants.

‘Agnieszka,’ I hissed, not able and not willing to subdue my anger, ‘she lived here, yes?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ the woman answered, her voice quavering. ‘Our Nieshka. My lord, is— is something wrong?’

She clutched at her apron, her fingers twisting in the worn fabric, her eyes glittering with fear; not fear of me, I realised suddenly, but fear for Agnieszka – their little Nieshka. Her father, I assume, took a step forward, his body wound tight as a spring. His eyes had a strange, hard quality to them, ready – I truly believe – to physically lay hands on me if I had brought their daughter to harm.

Magic can’t fabricate loyalty: that mad, selfless loyalty that would compel these people to fear more for their wild disaster of a child than they feared me, their lord, the immortal Dragon. Just like that, all my fierce certainty huffed out of me, like I’d been deflated, leaving me stiff and confused. My eyes refocused as I took in their perfectly ordinary home, a single story of square rooms and a large, crackling hearth – surprisingly clean and orderly, considering the state of their daughter. I couldn’t feel any sign of magic, not a flicker of it in them or their home.

I’d like to say that I realised then my mistake, that I apologised for bursting into their home, terrorising their family and— and taking their daughter. But of course, I didn’t. I grew stiff and prickly with embarrassment. Besides, I had to be certain.

‘Is there somewhere she slept?’ I snapped coldly.

Her mother led me through to one of the back rooms and ah— yes, there it was. They’d left it for her, a shrine to her untidiness: a cover half thrown on the floor, an old dress torn and soaked three – no _five_ – inches deep in mud. Her mother’s face was flushed with embarrassment, but it would take more than a week to unknot this horror. Above her bed was a small shelf scattered with an array of damaged and disintegrating possessions; they seemed to be lined up to grow more tattered the further along the shelf you looked.

I reached for one of the small, woollen toys: a sad thing, faded and half empty of stuffing. I turned it over in my long fingers as if it were some kind of holy and ancient artefact.

‘What are you?’ I asked, utterly bewildered. What could she be, if not a spy or a trap or…?

‘I-it was a piglet, my lord,’ her mother stammered behind me.

I felt my face flush bright scarlet and I closed my hand around the ugly thing in a fist.

‘That is all,’ I said, snapping on my heel and striding past her, my long coat billowing out behind me. ‘Thank you for your time.’

‘M-my lord?’ the tone was a question, but I ignored it as I stepped briskly past them, barely seeing the bows and the exchange of uneasy glances.

I didn’t hesitate before casting the travel spell to bring me back to the tower – the last thing I needed were more Dvernik villagers noticing their lord loitering in their streets – but back in my own home, I took a moment to clear my head. I gazed again at the raggedy toy; I had inadvertently brought it with me, still cradled in the palm of my hand. She wasn’t a spy – she couldn’t be. I had realised that much as soon as I had seen that look in her mother’s eyes. Agnieszka of Dvernik, child of the Valley, what are you and _what_ were you doing with _Luthe’s Summoning_?

Stepping back into my laboratory, I held the toy up where her startled stone-skin eyes could see it. ‘So,’ I said, ‘no spy. Only a witling.’

I was still stiff and angry, and embarrassed from that exchange with her family, so for a moment I considered leaving her like that. She certainly could do no harm as a statue – I assumed – and perhaps I could pass this off as some kind of lesson, if the king’s court ever descended on me for long enough to discover I had not trained a potential witch.

Alas, no. I crouched next to her, holding my coat carefully away from her and the mess she’d made of the floor. I placed a hand on her and spoke the words, ‘ _Tezavon tahozh, tezavon tahozh kivi, kanzon lihush.’_ The stone receded from her pale skin and I felt her forehead, cool and smooth beneath my fingers. She started to flail her arms around haphazardly, so I grabbed her wrists to keep her still before she crashed into any more of my possessions, and to prevent her from scrambling away again.

I saw her consider fleeing, her eyes glancing to the door and then back to my face, but she relaxed in my grip, just a little. For once there was a measure of calm and consideration on her face.

‘And now you’ll tell me: what were you doing?’ I could not fathom an answer, couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was going to say.

And yet somehow the answer still stunned me. ‘I only wanted a book to read,’ she said. ‘I didn’t— I didn’t think there was any harm—’

‘And you happened to take _Luthe’s Summoning_ off the shelf for a little reading,’ I said, letting the sarcasm drip into my voice, ‘and merely by chance…’ my voice slowed and tailed off. It was the truth, I realised, written clearly in her terrified expression. Unbelievable. ‘What an unequalled gift for disaster you have.’

I hardly knew what else to say. A person could hardly have undertaken something more ludicrously dangerous or more foolhardy if they had _tried_ to obliterate themselves. My gaze slid down and found the mess of glass around our feet, and I sighed with a mixture of despair and resignation.

‘Clean that up,’ I said, ‘and then come to the library. And _don’t_ touch anything else.’

It was my fault, really, I realised, as I paced the length of my library. If I had taught her even the most rudimentary magic, she might have recognised the danger in what she’d done. I had let her roam, unguided and unwatched, in a tower full of dangerous implements and unfettered magic, and I had given her not a whit of guidance. And yet, to take _the_ most dangerous of my books on merely a whim: really, her penchant for disaster was a marvel.

And another thing: the power of _The Summoning_ had been building. I’d felt its magic – unstable, yes, but growing. She’d been casting it, with or without my help. She’d gotten further than I would have believed, further than I think many of the wizards and witches of the Charovnikov would have managed after many years of study. Could I have stumbled through the first pages of _The Summoning_ after merely a day of magical training? No. No I think not.

When she arrived at the library, truly, it felt like she existed to vex me. Her dress was sodden, streaked with dust and mop-bucket water, and too short for her besides. Where did she even find the dust to get so covered? She could find mess where there was none, become covered in substances which I would swear were not there before she arrived. It was fascinating and infuriating in equal measure.

‘We’ll begin with _that_ , then,’ I said, eyeing her with distaste. ‘I needn’t be offended every time I have to look at you.’

She loitered untidily in doorway, so I beckoned her to me. When she stood before me, I took her hands and crossed them over her chest, fingertips on each opposite shoulder. It was like manipulating a rag doll again, though I have to admit, I was almost excited – curious at least – to see what she could do.

‘Now: _vanastalem_ ,’ I said, enunciating the word clearly for her.

She stared at me, sullen and mutinous, and I felt the anger seethe inside me all over again. I gripped her shoulders tightly – how exactly was I supposed to teach her if she wouldn’t cooperate?

‘I may have to put up with incompetence; I won’t tolerate spinelessness,’ I said, and especially not over some tiny cantrip when she had voluntarily undertaken _The Summoning._ ‘ _Say it_.’

She barely whispered it, but the word was clear enough. Silk skirts swirled around her feet, rich bottle-green and russet brown, lightly embroidered with shimmering vines which grew out of the hem and curled up onto the silk of her bodice. They looked to me like the thick canopy of a forest, leaves lit from above by a bright summer sun, elegant and beautiful – and they’d suit her, if she let them.

She sank, trembling, to the ground, all of her strength gone out of her like a light. She could barely lift her head, staring dully at my boots as if the cantrip had dragged the very life out of her. I gazed at her in astonishment.

‘Look at you, and over a nothing of a spell again,’ I said, my brow furrowed in confusion. ‘At least your appearance is improved. See if you can keep yourself in a decent state from now on. Tomorrow, we’ll try another.’

She remained on the ground for some time in a pile of ruffled silk and pure dramatics. I tried to ignore her and return to my much-neglected studies, but my eyes kept getting tugged back to the ridiculous picture of her on my floor. After nearly full twenty minutes, she crawled off on her hands and knees, a dark thundercloud seeming to follow after her. I was glad to be rid of the distraction.

And so our lessons began, such as they were; they seemed to be more of an exercise in knocking her down with the smallest of cantrips than any real kind of teaching. I had never planned to take an apprentice – my war with the Wood was quite sufficient occupation – but I suppose I had considered what it would be like, in a way. There was a part of me that had assumed, foolishly, that it would be somewhat like my own apprenticeship, and that we might both learn something from the experience.

I had been much younger, of course, and I had learned magic in the heart of the Charovnikov, surrounded by the very greatest wizards and witches of Polnya. When I began, I had been nothing more than an empty-headed child, but at least I had understood an opportunity when I saw one. Once I learned to read, well – there was hardly a book in that vast library that was safe from my eager and inexperienced hands. Magic is a fascinating discipline, somewhere between a high art and an exact science, unknowably vast and endlessly complex. Even after a century and a half of study, I am an infant in its understanding, and I say this despite being the greatest wizard of my generation. It goes without saying that I applied myself to my studies with vigour. I don’t even remember learning the simple cantrips; I suppose I had mastered those in my earliest childhood.

It was not to be so with my grudging apprentice. In fact, it was not to be much of anything. She would appear in varying degrees of absurd undress, mutter out _vanastalem_ on command – _why_ she didn’t do this for herself before presenting herself to me, I will never comprehend – manage to slur out one other simple cantrip and then collapse. The degree of collapse did diminish some small amount over time, but she would crawl away after our morning sessions and vanish into her room until dusk: I forwent any kind of dinner for some weeks.

It was the degree of _reluctance_ that truly perplexed me. The initial fear was perhaps more understandable: they all fear magic – even the nobles shudder and look horrified at the merest cantrip, though they’d have no qualms about making use of us when it suited them. And yet she had a chance to _learn_ : the chance to gain mastery over one of the greatest wonders in all of existence. As a peasant, she had nothing to her name and little more in terms of prospects than to be some pigfarmer’s wife – if indeed _he_ could tolerate her wilfulness and slovenly ways. As a witch, she would have power, wealth and freedom; well, to a degree.

These lofty goals evidently did not interest Agnieszka of Dvernik. One morning she even tried to hide from her lessons, in the kitchen of all places, as if mindless drudgery were preferable to the learning of magic. I found her with one of my sentinels, and she followed it back up to library, albeit it slowly and sullenly, her feet dragging on every step.

I glared at her when she entered, irritated that she had managed to waste yet more of my time.

‘As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip,’ I snapped at her. ‘we’ve already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices.’

Did she imagine that I enjoyed this endless spectacle any more than she did? Did she not realise that I would rather not have to spend so much of my time hammering words of power through her thick, disagreeable skull? Yet the shudder of power as _Luthe’s Summoning_ rattled the foundations of my tower was far too fresh a memory for me to ignore her.

Instead, I narrowed my eyes and took in her most recent homage to disaster. ‘How much of a slattern have you made yourself today?’

She held her skirt over itself, as if that would hide the multitude of oil splashes and grubby handprints. A cobweb trailed out from the hem of her skirt like a silken veil. A cobweb. I’m unsure if I have ever _seen_ a cobweb in this tower since I employed my own workings to keep it clean.

‘ _Vanastalem,’_ she uttered with the same degree of mutiny I had come to expect from her.

Today her dress was Autumn leaves wrought into silk, burnt orange and warm butter-yellow sweeping up from her ankles to her neckline. It was almost always the forest with her, I noticed: all summer greens, twisting vines and autumnal leaves. Once she had created an ice-blue dress the very same colour as the frozen surface of the Spindle in winter. Sometimes I wondered if I had inadvertently invited the Valley itself into my tower.

Before she keeled over, I gestured to my table: to a stack of books I had left neatly on my desk the night before. I pushed them over, trying to keep the look of distaste from my face as they tumbled into an untidy heap.

‘Now then,’ I said. ‘To order them: _darendetal.’_

 _‘Darendetal,’_ she muttered, a cantrip so at odds with every aspect of her personality that I half-expected it to blow up in her face.

The books _did_ re-order, sliding and bumping themselves back into a pile on my desk. I felt just the smallest sliver of satisfaction – perhaps we were turning a corner in her continual ineptitude. I surveyed her work: Abdulov, Kalyagin, Bragin. No, not by author then, but by title. Except…

‘What idiocy is this?’ I demanded. ‘There’s no order here – look at this.’

She’d made a stack, certainly, but there was no kind of organisation to it whatsoever. Neither author, nor title, nor indeed subject – though I hardly expected her to understand such a thing – had played any part in the sorting of this pile. Unless… but there was an order, I realised, staring at the bindings in growing consternation.

‘— _colour?_ ’ I said, my voice rising. ‘By _colour_? You—’ It was _technically_ correct, that was the worst of it. And she looked _pleased_ with herself, as if her own happiness was directly and inversely proportional to my own.

‘Oh, get out!’ I hissed, throwing up my hands in exasperation. Every step of her education would be paid for in blood, I could see.

From there, her defiance only grew, as if I had exposed a small but exploitable crack in my armour. The vicious pixie seemed to delight in vexing me in any way she could conceive of. She no longer even attempted to dress herself, appearing most often in one of her fine gowns with the back hanging loose and so covered in kitchen dirt that the colour of it was no longer discernible. She looked like a lunatic, crowned in filth and gleaming rebellion.

It was actually easier to deal with this onslaught, in some ways. At least if it were deliberate, I could understand the degree to which she dirtied herself. It was a new attack, in which _vanestalem_ was my only defence, and I had to admit a degree of grudging respect for my new adversary.

‘How do you do this to yourself?’ I marvelled one morning, when she arrived smeared with jam and what was – I think – a clump of rice pudding in her knotted hair. She looked perfectly pleased with herself, of course, which only added to the whole mad ensemble; no amount of _vanestalem_ would mute that wicked gleam in her eyes.

I had no notion, of course, that she _still_ didn’t grasp what was happening. I couldn’t possibly have conceived that she _still_ didn’t realise that she was a witch. One might have assumed that all the spellcasting would have given her some indication, but apparently not; what she thought we were doing every morning in those interminable early weeks, I have no idea. In fact, I don’t want to know. She did eventually come to the realisation on her own, though – as was so often the case with my new apprentice – the circumstances were hardly ideal.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you so much for reading this mad and fun adventure in Sarkan's POV. His visit to Agnieszka's family is definitely one of the things I was most looking forward to writing.
> 
> If you've come back from Chapter 1, double thank you, and I promise Chapter 3 is in progress, though at a very chill sort of pace. Of course, we get to see Marek through Sarkan's eyes in 3 and that is SO MUCH FUN.
> 
> I think maybe I've messed up Chapters and Series and who knows what, as I'm very new to AO3, so I hope it links together.
> 
> This is my social isolation fun writing during Covid-19, as it's become increasingly difficult to focus on other writing during these strange times. It's very casual and not particularly proof-read, as I'm sure is more than apparent.
> 
> I hope everyone is safe and well <3 Stay home, read fanfic and be kind to yourselves.


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